Good Good Credit Report is Key
Great credit is key to getting good loans. In this market where lending is tight and money isn’t freely flowing, the only way to get someone to lend you money is with good credit. Here are a few ways to achieve this.
Credit monitoring services like ones from myFICO is very good because it automatically keeps track of your credit report and alerts you whenever there are any changes. You can of course choose to do it yourself but that’s 1000x harder.
Every year, you can get one credit report from each agency (there are three total). If you spread it out and get one from each company every couple of months, you can theoretically keep track of your scores and stay on top of it without much time in between.
Lenders will just pull your report when you request a loan, so if you are maxed out on your credit, they see it as a no-no. It doesn’t really matter if you pay off your credit cards every month because the utilization rate will be very high.
Don’t always try to apply for credit cards. Every time you apply for these cards, the companies will pull your credit report and that puts a mark on your credit. If there are many of these pulls in quick succession, the credit score will suffer because it is believed that only people who really need money will apply for so many lines of credit at the same time.
Use all your credit cards because having cards canceled on you is not a good sign that you are a good borrower. This will in turn lower your score.
Remember to apply for a few credit cards and have some lines of credit available even if you don’t need it. I used to only have one card and one day I was denied for my business credit card because they told me I only have 1 credit card and haven’t shown that I can pay off debt, even though I have tons of cash in my bank account.
Having multiple types of debt (car, mortgage, credit card, student loans) among others is good because it shows that you are able to handle bills that come due every month. It also works the same as having multiple credit cards.
